Why metacrisis?

Contemplating the evolutionary demands of our time…

Assertion: our complex global challenges (polycrisis) are direct result of collective worldview (Strong Agency) and resulting praxis. There is an adjacent/accessible view that empowers us to respond to these conditions in a “healthy” way.

I will herein attempt some acknowledgments, a statement of relevant assumptions, a demonstration of the above assertion, and close with why metacrisis is inherent, necessary, and valuable.

Acknowledgments: the asserted conditioning collective worldview (SA) simply represents an organic emergent “Apex predator” in a wider natural ecosystem of views.

This view does not exist in a vacuum, i.e. it is constituted of other principally more fundamental views. Like other successive “views” in this construct, this view conditions these more fundamental views, and is conditioned by them, in mutually reinforced feedback loops.

Assumption: Views (“worldviews”) emerge as natural evolutionary artifacts of durable creative utility. With increasing thresholds of sophistication, both individual humans*, collectives, and humanity itself, have self-reflexive capacities that introduce a novel force in the scope of evolutionary dynamics.

Fundamentally, if you, or I, or we identify, consider and understand a particular approach (either perceptive or active) to existential conditions, we have (to some degree) a commensurate capacity to innovate on that approach. This innovation can range from subtle tweaks to wholesale divestment and replacement of process.

These interventions, in the context of society, civilization, humanity, can be (and often are) undertaken as structural interventions that become implicitly influential at population scales greater than those conscientiously participating in propagating the intervention. (These population scales in fact transcend boundaries of species and even kingdom of living organism.)

Just as we (hopefully) employ a certain ethic when undertaking to innovate in our own lives for personal benefit, it is immeasurably important to do so (do no harm) when innovating at increasingly social scales.

Demonstration of assertion: this predominant Apex view can be considered as an expression of a few high-level principled elements (assumptions.):

A) “Reality has a hard center.” — At the base of this vast and amazing existence, there lies a Meaningful Truth Condition. This condition might be God, a divine principle, or the fundamental nature of matter and physical law.

B) Through diligence, application of discipline, personal values, and intelligence, we, both collectively and individually, can Approach a perfect harmony with that Condition.

C) The dedication of one’s life and practical integrity to that Approach represents the pinnacle of morality.

D) All humans are subject to these three principles and exist in proximate orbital relations to one (or more) of three personal orientations; 1. “On the path.” — To greater or lesser degrees achieving the Approach. 2. Confused. — Wandering aimlessly off the path and therefore in some mortal danger of failing to achieve the objective. 3. Fundamentally evil. — Whether by unfortunately confused ignorance, or downright obstinate rejection of Truth, actively counteracting the path for self and others.

As a result of these fundamental principles, all nonhuman elements exist in subservience to these prime directives. To various degrees, this category of “nonhuman elements,” is inclusive of those Confused and Evil. Conventional morality therefore suggests that presuming success in the initial endeavor, to Approach the Condition, the resulting state of all nonhuman artifacts represent just so much grist for the mill.

Significant Limitations: This set of principles, though of intrinsic value on their own, are met with certain conditional limitations that seed within them their own eventual evolutionary unfitness for continued predominance.

They are based in rational linear objectivity, and as such tend strongly to ignore elements which are nonrational (inclusive not just of pre-rational, or irrational, but also post rational, trans rational, and others), nonlinear, or subjective/intersubjective/intersubjective/transjective.

I must digress — there is a certain majesty in appreciating a natural hierarchical view of existence. As a molecule is a compound of atomic particles, which are themselves compounds of subatomic elements, etc., each successive order represents increasing complexity. World systems are more complex than discrete atomic systems. Similarly, contextual of and parallel to, ecosystems are more complex than the individual living elements of which they are constituted, and worldviews are more complex than the elements of which they are constituted.

Existence itself is not simply a fundamental condition of what is, but includes also some field of possibility as an intrinsic element of that condition. The scope of possibility unfolds recursively, with increasing complexity giving rise to increasingly diverse scope and scale of possibility.

Essentially, an evolutionary force produces a profound diversity of initiative across a seemingly infinite span of categories. Of these, some very small percentage achieve persistent durability and therefore can be regarded as evolutionary utility. (This statement is profoundly subject to diversity across all conceivable scales of time, size, space, relative relevance, etc.)

Any evolutionary utility is durable, only within the degrees of context that define the boundaries of its sufficiency. At that threshold, the utility is either consumed as nutrient to a higher order utility, or dissipates entirely.

(SA) Threshold of Utility: Any high-level category of concern within the complex Polycrisis, can be viewed as a result of tremendous evolutionary success as measured in its broad surface area of exposed scope of possibility. Economy represents the flourishing of a population in its context. Environment represents the natural relational impacts resulting from that flourishing. Geopolitical reflects a conversation of increasing nuance and complexity between a vast plurality of enacted views. Societal describes the container of interpersonal dialogue by which subcultural pockets of the overall population co-relate and evolve. Technological describes the vast field of practical curiosity and innovation with “context as object.”

The current Apex worldview has supercharged the refinement and expansion of impact in all these domains. That expansive force is now met by thresholds of viscosity in terms of geographic space (“away,” as in “throwing things away,” has gone away;) social space (there are no remaining enclaves of human cultural affair existing free of the impositions of this Apex worldview; and personal space (the spiritual sovereignty of each and every one of us is now wholly compelled to act either in compliance, response, or ignorance in relation to this predominant force.)

The pressures of this viscosity inherently becomes a material new order of context within which that apex view/praxis (paradigm) must evolve or be destroyed.

In the words of Dr. Einstein, “A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move towards higher levels.” This new type of thinking is not simply an additional cog on the existing machine, as is hoped by our techno-optimists brethren, who imagine AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) to be that magic cog. Rather, when our fuzzy haired friend refers to new thinking, implicit in the conditions is the wholesale evolution of the collective praxis at force.

Adjacent transformation: What does it mean if we imagine that this Apex force is to “evolve” into some “new being” competent to the context of our time?

This declining worldview has accomplished its success by seeing itself as somehow separate from the world. Whether disregarding the material plane for spiritual purposes, living and identity of man versus nature, or separating ourselves as mind versus object, we have facilitated an action of colonial force and attempted rule over “our domain.” (Again, this is natural; a defense against predation of all kinds, efforts to “secure” or access to those things we deemed necessary, like food, etc. consciousness has dawned through a certain territory of darkness.)

Through this endeavor we have learned to realize with a much greater degree of credible force that we are not the colonial rulers of the world, but at the very least humble subjects of its profound majesty. Perhaps a more enlightened view suggests, not so much subjects, but rather like any number of organ systems in the body, unique and distinct actors with an important role to play in the ecosystemic flourishing of the whole.

The adaptive insight of this emergent View is simply this: context is King, and everything is context. To join the chorus of countless others, What we do to the Earth, we do to ourselves. This is not a novel insight, but it is accessible in terms of orienting ourselves to respond individually and collectively to this evolutionary threshold of crisis.

In essence, as elements of this Polycrisis touch and affect virtually every living being on the planet, we are in this together and therefore none of us is in a position to address it on our own or on behalf of “everyone else.” This “new view,” is therefore inclusive. The evolutionary response will come from everywhere, but must have certain inherent qualities of a profound respect.

All life is sacred and both personally and collectively we must, where possible, do no harm. Recognizing that all must eat to live, and therefore doing some harm is fundamentally necessary, we can thus undertake to do that harm only with the highest degree of reverence and gentleness of which we are capable.

Today, an enormous preponderance of our daily human activity is trapped within the paradigm of striving against. Whether against poverty, against competition, against fear, against loss, this underlying dynamic drives processes of degraded discrimination and harm. As long as we live, humans will rise from rest to go about those engagements in the world that seem right to them given their circumstance in the moment. The path forward lies in our better understanding those context and systems of engagement, as our shared space of co-creating the world.

Why metacrisis?

Metacrisis is the initiatory horizon of transformation between these dueling worldviews. While the former (SA), glorified in its predominance, clings to its initiatory adolescence, the initiatory challenge is the enactment of an enfolding paradigm of the latter (Ecosystemic Awareness.) Metacrisis is to humanity as the onset of puberty, the end of adolescence, menopause, or the transition into elder-hood is for an individual.

From the very basis of our understood existence, whether subatomic quantum field, or fundamental moment of perception, life is filled with paradox. Dynamics emerge, oppose, reflect, and synergize into new emergent wholeness, endlessly giving rise to a recursive cycle of evolutionary inquiry and play.

While these loops reflect a dance of coherence and transition, metacrisis may be understood as that inflection point where a certain wholeness of maturity becomes subsumed in a new order of creative potential. Like an individual human, our modern global civilization can be seen to have matured in its childhood (SA,) a condition both simultaneously majestic, and profoundly inadequate to the demands of adulthood (EA.)

Absent a community of adults in the room, it is for us now to peer into our potential for a peaceful and ordered harmony of Economic/Ecological and Ecophilic wisdom to emerge. We must design for this implicit initiatory ordeal, in essence we must open our hearts, minds, eyes and broader awareness to our mother Earth, our quiet yet elder human brothers and sisters, we must learn to coparent ourselves.

What are the minimum viable thresholds of sufficiency to become “the adults in the room?”